Lady of Mazes

by Karl Schroeder

  Bad idea, she told herself as she paced increasingly familiar avenues leading into the heart of the city. Even so, the quiet of the city lulled her; as evening fell she found it easier and easier to pretend she was back in the old days. Barrastea surrounded her in all its centuries-old grandeur and peace. She could imagine the flutter of social manifolds surrounding her again like the breathing of a god, and she would run home ...

  She stopped, scowling at herself. This was foolishness; yet she was only a few blocks from the Kodaly estate now. And though she had told herself not to, she couldn't help but wonder if her parents were there, and safe.

  Her footsteps took her unerringly in that direction.

  Committed now, she began to relax. After all, she was hardly the lone agent she appeared. Just before they arrived here, Peaseblossom had shown Livia a telescopic image of the deep clouds of the Lethe. At first she thought she was looking at a navy of ghosts — just the smeared wavering outlines of ships coalescing in the dark. Then Peaseblossom had zoomed in and Livia realized what was happening. The trillions of parts and supplies that made up the Lethe were not, it seemed, entirely unpow-ered and dumb. At Gort's command, rod and girder, plate and lever were sailing together, clinging and forming larger pieces of machinery. These too precipitated and self-organized — a process, Peaseblossom said, that required but a few rules of construction, and no overseer. Out of the limitless resources of the Lethe, in a matter of days, a fleet of dreadnoughts capable of subduing the entire human Archipelago was condensing like dew.

  Soon that navy would arrive. They might appear overhead, but more likely they would encircle the spinning coronal like the spokes of a wheel. They would be invisible from inside; but they could vaporize Teven in an instant if they chose to.

  Livia only hoped that Choronzon would interpret the ancient pact of protection for Teven in a way that left the humans of the coronal alive after it was liberated.

  A spiral of cables lofted into the sky from somewhere in the Kodaly estate. Otherwise, the buildings and sails looked the same as they always had; only the glittering lights of the Cirrus city overhead signaled the difference. Livia felt a deep ache in her breast and her steps faltered as she came to a long, ivy-wreathed gallery that encircled her parents' main residence. Lights shone there, warm as roses in the deepening twilight. Somewhere, music played She had danced in the courtyards here. She had sung for family and friends, and even for audiences of shimmering, half-real animas visiting from distant points. The dark undersides of the canopied trees should be lit like pavilions with flickering Societies; a murmur of timeless life should permeate everything. But there was none of that.

  Livia hesitated, then reached up and removed the metal clip that shielded her inscape implants. She braced herself for an onslaught of changes — but the gardens remained the same.

  Only when she looked up could she tell that she was back in inscape. The sky rotating overhead looked much like the tactical display of games mode. The firmament was divided into sectors in a vast Mercator projection, each sector filled with letters and numbers. Twirling in the sky in their thousands were what looked like tarot cards — each one, she realized with a start, the visible sign of a major role in the Book. Threads of light connected them, interweaving with and obscuring the networks of Cirrus.

  Livia was so busy staring up at the intricate patterns that the polite cough right next to her made her jump. She instantly fell into a defensive posture, then recognized the figure standing in the darkness next to her. It was the House's servant AI, Capewan.

  He bowed, as he always did when he greeted her. "Livia, it's good to have you home."

  She burst into tears. He stepped forward to embrace her, but he was only real in inscape; her shift could give the impression of his arms around her, but there was no solidity behind it. "My parents — " she croaked. "Are they safe?"

  "They're here, Livia. Come, I'll take you to them." He stepped back and took her hand. She pulled away.

  "No — don't tell them I'm here. I don't want them to know."

  "All right." He smiled in his usual genial way, and she wondered whether the intelligence behind his bland face was still that of the Kodaly's ancient servant. Quite likely he was now a tool of 3340, like Raven's animals.

  "Can I see them?" she asked after a moment. He put a finger to his lips and led her into one of the buildings. This was a place like a stone filigree, its walls pierced by thousands of openings that let in air, as well as ivy, birds, and squirrels. Livia padded up a flight of worn stone steps and passed through a barely felt weather barrier, into warmer, dry air and the smell of books. Light shone through an archway in front of her. She crept up and peered around the doorjamb.

  Livia's father and mother sat in deep armchairs under the towering bookshelves of the Kodaly library. The volumes arrayed around them were all unique, all hand-lettered and bound individually: book as artform. Livia had only read one or two — but she had held, paged through, and admired hundreds over the years.

  " ... The crowd is growing," her father was saying. Since her parents were facing away from her, Livia felt brave enough to take a step into the room and crane her neck to see better. The Good Book lay on the low table between the armchairs; around it, piled up, opened and bookmarked, were many other volumes. Livia could read several titles: the Holy Bible, the / Ching, the Little Red Book.

  " ... What they're doing," said her mother. "It's supremely creepy. All those people, just standing there ... "

  Her father laughed humorlessly. "And how do you suppose we'd have looked to somebody outside inscape when we had our Societies? — talking to people who aren't there? No, it isn't the silence and stillness that bothers me."

  "Well, what then?"

  "Why are they all together? Jammed in like that? That's what bothers me."

  She shifted impatiently. "But why doesn't the resistance do something?"

  "They can't influence inscape on that sort of scale," her father said. Mother didn't answer, and the silence dragged out Livia began to feel exposed.

  She slipped out the doorway. Livia was practically panting, and had to lean on the wall for a moment to compose herself. Just the sound of their voices had been enough to pull up a storm of emotions — relief, sorrow, fury at the changes that had happened. She couldn't settle on how she felt, but staggered down the steps and outside, gulping the fresh air miserably.

  "My room," she said to Capewan after she'd gotten some control of herself. "Is it still there?"

  "Repaired, my lady. It was somewhat damaged in the ... recent troubles."

  She set off in the direction of her room, but didn't object when Capewan followed her. All that could be heard was their footsteps, and cricket-song.

  She couldn't face her parents right now. If she once spoke to them, she felt, she wouldn't want to leave this place again. Just being home would be enough that she would turn her back on everything else — Westerhaven, her unwanted role as savior to her people — and, like them, simply live on, spending her evenings sipping tea in the library. And damn the rest of the world.

  Round three turns and there it was: the park/ballroom lay before her, with her open-air bedroom visible in the coignes of the arch opposite. There was her bed; her foot-locker was open; her clothes were piled neatly where last she had seen them scattered and torn under the talons of a beast like an unfolding flower of black and crimson. All she had to do was climb up the ladder worked into the stone of the arch, and she could flop down on the bed as she'd done a thousand times before, safe and home. In the morning she could climb down and bring breakfast to her parents.

  She pressed a combination of stones at the base of the arch, and a hidden locker opened. There were her clothes, and a favorite sword.

  "One question," she said to Capewan as she strapped on the sword.

  "Yes, Livia?"

  She wanted to ask about this "resistance" she'd heard her parents mention, but that might not be discreet, considering she was speakin
g to an entity intimately hooked into inscape.

  Instead, she said, "There are no more manifolds, are there?"

  "No, ma'am."

  "But people — my parents — they don't seem unhappy."

  "No, ma'am."

  "Why is that?"

  "Some people say that the Book has made the manifolds unnecessary."

  "Is mat what you believe?" she asked.

  He hesitated, his face shadowed under the trees. Once again she felt a prickle of unease at who this might be she was speaking to. But she had to ask the question.

  "I believe the conquest has shown us that no matter how different the manifolds we lived in, we were always one people — in that we believed in our differences, if nothing else. We are united in our sorrow at having lost them ... In my opinion," he said.

  Livia's shoulders slumped. A terrible tension left her with a deep sigh. This was the same Capewan as before; he was unchanged despite all that had happened. Somehow, knowing that made her feel that she really had come home at last

  "Thank you, Capewan. Don't tell anyone that you saw me here."

  "Of course, Livia. I'm glad to know you're still alive."

  "And I, that you are, too." She wiped her eyes and, turning away, walked under the arch and up the paths, and back onto the streets of Barrastea.

  Though she was tired and her feet hurt from walking, Livia drifted on through the dark streets. The Red Quarter was trying to be as lively as it had been before 3340 — the streets here were full of revelers and drunks. In the old days, there would have been thousands of animas here, too, men and women trying on the other's masks for a night, the fat becoming thin, the old temporarily young. These masks were gone now, a fact to be mourned.

  Now that cool night had fallen, the wealthy and fashionable of Cirrus began to make an appearance. Taut networks of glowing cable descended and they walked down them, not even bothering to put their arms out for balance. Though none would set foot on solid ground, they came to within a few meters of it and perched like birds, tossing confections and toys to the crowd below in return for bottles of wine lobbed carefully back.

  Capewan might be right. Westerhaven and Cirrus talking and laughing together was extraordinary to see. Despite their differences, they had been made one manifold by 3340. And it seemed they were happy.

  As she walked, though, Livia began to see others venturing out into the streets. Shrouded figures, for the most part, darting from shadow to shadow, usually in tight groups. Livia followed a couple of these and caught glimpses of outlandish costumes made of hand-knit materials or hides. She heard strange accents in the strained and hushed whispers these new people traded.

  She thought of the drummers; of the elders of Raven and all the other manifolds that had banned machinery. For them, there was nothing familiar or easy about this manifold 3340 had forced them to live in.

  She had been walking in silence for twenty minutes when Livia began to spot the standing people.

  At first they were just dots in the distance, like stones in a stream — all solitary, none raising its head to acknowledge passersby. No one in turn spoke to them. As Livia approached the nearest figure, she saw why. He stared through her with sightless eyes. Either he saw nothing, or she was invisible to him.

  As she walked she spotted more — first ones and twos, then small groups together. They wore rags, and while a few moved, they shuffled slowly, like sleepwalkers. She had seen such distraction before, in people who were fully immersed in some inscape vision. All of these men, women, and children were held fast within some manifold she couldn't perceive.

  Livia turned a corner and found herself facing a street full of silent figures, still as mannequins. She hurried past the expressionless figures, deliberately not looking at their faces.

  For a while she had been too distracted by the unnerving sight of these silent people to pay much attention to the direction her footsteps were taking her. Now Livia looked up to see a set of tall domes rising above the trees ahead. They appeared intact, but as she broke into a run and the Great Library grew closer, she saw that the building was sealed up.

  There had been some attempt at repair, but it was haphazard and obviously done without the aid of bots. The doors were chained shut and autumn leaves had drifted around them. Not that it would be difficult to get inside, since many of the great stained-glass windows were missing, and there were even holes in the walls.

  For some reason seeing the library like this reassured her. This place, at least, did not deny the violence of conquest She found a low gap in the wall and shimmied through. Dropping to the marble floor of the library, she looked around. It was a heartbreakingly familiar place; she had been in this very room many times as a child. The bones of the mastodon had stood proudly then, rather than leaning in a charred jumble; and the dinosaur skeletons had posed as if sizing up the visitors for lunch. Now the precious artifacts of Earth lay toppled like dolls.

  At least, she thought with a wry smile, she had found a place to sleep.

  She knew the hidden fleet of the anecliptics loomed somewhere beneath her feet; it was still hard to believe she was not alone here as she paced through the blackened, roofless chambers of the library. In fact Livia felt oddly angry — offended, somehow — that such hidden power should be available to her now, when she hadn't even known it existed the first time she stood in ruins on Teven. Then as now, vast anecliptic forces had lurked beyond the landscapes of the coronal, and Choronzon himself had walked the streets of Barrastea. But none of those powers had come to save her.

  She stopped suddenly. The scent of wood smoke had wafted to her from somewhere ahead. Now that she was still and concentrating, she could hear voices coming from the building's rotunda. As quietly as she could, she crept up to the archway and peered inside.

  Orange flames leapt up from a marble waste receptacle. Seven people sat around it on broken benches or chunks of stone. They were dressed well enough, in shifts tuned to somber black and brown colors. But all looked thin and careworn. They were talking together but she couldn't hear what they were saying.

  Livia was just debating whether to make her appearance known when a strong voice behind her said, "Hands up! Turn around slowly."

  She raised her hands and turned back to the darkness of the corridor. "Check her for weapons," said the voice, and an indistinct man loomed out of the darkness. He frisked Livia efficiently and took her sword.

  "All right. March in there where we can see you." Livia walked into the rotunda, feeling exposed and more than a little frightened. She still had her hands up. The people sitting around the fire shouted to one another and several jumped up as she appeared.

  "She was watching you, Ross," said the man who had caught her. "Recognize her?"

  One of the men from the fire came over and peered at Livia. "Haven't seen her around the city."

  "Okay. Well, sit her down and let's look at her." Rough hands pushed her down onto a chunk of stone. Ross stood over her with his arms crossed as the other man emerged from the shadows, firelight glinting off his pistol.

  She recognized him. This was one of the peers, albeit of a crowd a few years older than Livia's had been. She couldn't remember his first name, but his surname, she was sure, was Bisson.

  "Who are you?" he asked brusquely.

  "My name is Livia Kodaly," she said. "Perhaps you've heard of me?"

  She saw a flicker of surprise cross his face, then he veiled it with a sneer and a shrug. "Could be," he said curtly. "Then again, why skulk in the shadows? Besides, I've seen Livia Kodaly before, you don't look a bit like her."

  She met his eye and managed a small smile. "Well, I did change my clothes while I was away."

  He didn't laugh. "How much could she have overheard?" he asked the people by the fire. As he turned away Livia noticed that there was an ugly scar behind his ear. She looked at the man Ross, who was still standing over her. It was hard to tell from the angle, but it looked as though he had a similar scar.
/>
  The bone behind the ear was where inscape implants were usually embedded.

  One of the men shrugged and said, "We were talking about Esther."

  Livia sat up straighter. "Esther Mannus? Is she all right?"

  Bisson stared at her for a few seconds. Then he said, "We'd best find out what this one knows, anyway."

  She opened her mouth to object, but any argument would be a distraction at this point. After all, she'd come here for a purpose, one that had very few hours left in it. She had to take the chance that she had found the people she was looking for. "I'll only tell my story to Maren Ellis," she said.

  Bisson crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow. "Oh, will you now?"

  "But meanwhile I've some harmless questions of my own," she said. "Like: who are those silent people in the streets? What's Cirrus doing in Barrastea? What happened to Kale and the other ancestors? Is anybody in charge here anymore, or is it all the Book?"

  They were looking at one another with varying expressions of surprise and suspicion. "She's just trying to convince us she doesn't know anything," said one.

  Her heart leaped at that. "What would I know?" She looked from face to face. "Are there places in Teven that still aren't conquered? I've seen people skulking about after dark, looking like lost souls. Are you like them? Just hiding here from 3340? Or are you doing something about it?"

  "Shut up!" Bisson grabbed her wrist and twisted hard. She gasped. He let go, and she pulled her hand back.